I'm a bit particular about words. I've been called a grammar nazi before, but I myself will twist grammar and sentence structure to its breaking point and beyond. Really, it's all about the words themselves. I love words. I love reading them, I love speaking them, and I love learning about them.
The flip side of that love is a certain, shall we say, testiness when someone uses the wrong word. It irks me. I particularly resent it when people change the meaning of a word. There are many examples of this: 'decimate', there's one. I haven't seen a single correct usage of the word 'decimate' in any mainstream publication for as long as I can remember. People say crops are decimated by drought, or that Murdoch's media empire has been decimated by the phone hacking scandal. But that's not what the word means, I cry! The word has deci right in it! DECI. 10. It means to destroy one TENTH of something, usually a population.
Or at least, it used to mean that. And, in fact, that's rather the point of this little essay. You see, if you go to an updated dictionary now and look up the word 'decimate', you'll find the definition is now “to destroy a large percentage of.” Goodness, how that grates on me. Persistent misuse of the word has resulted in a new definition, one that completely ignores the word's composition, etymology and the history of the concept it represents. Or rather, represented. With time and effort, words can be distorted, changed forever.
There is perhaps no word whose meaning and emotional content has been corrupted more than the simple, rather pleasant word liberal.
Liberal: A person that is open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
The enemies of liberalism have managed to turn the word itself into an epithet, a sort of pejorative whose very utterance is now spat rather than spoken. “You, sir, are a flaming liberal!” The word is now an entire argument, one that begins and ends with the apparently self-evident fact that the so-accused is not worthy of being heard, that their opinions are not merely invalid but actually absurd.
Of course, history is full of words like this: 'witch', 'Communist' and 'terrorist' spring to mind. All are words with specific meanings that were (or are) co-opted by small-minded people into meaning the same thing: “A non-person whose opinions are too dangerous or too ridiculous to even consider.”
The term 'liberal' has been so denigrated, so poisoned that to acknowledge one's self as a liberal today is very nearly political suicide. Liberals have retreated to the related (but not identical) term progressive. This is a very telling choice, for reasons I will expand on in a moment.
The corruption of the word 'liberal' has been written about at length by people far wiser and more talented than myself, so (like CNN) I'll leave it there. Its original meaning may be lost for good. That does not mean, however, that I have to like it, and there's another political term that's at risk of being distorted and ruined forever. Unlike the word liberal, however, there's still a good chance we can save this one.
Conservative: A person that holds to traditional attitudes and values and is cautious about change or innovation.
A conservative is someone who would prefer to stick with what works, with what history has shown will work, rather than trying out something new and untested. It's easy to see how this is opposed by liberalism; if left to their own devices, conservatives would be stable but progress would be quite slow. A conservative is pushed by liberals outside his or her comfort zone. By the same token, a liberal must be reigned in by the conservative's caution; purely liberal ideas are frequently risky, and when the game is politics, lives are in the balance. Caution is warranted. Conservatism is important. But when I look at Washington DC these days, I don't see very many conservatives, and what few there are exist mostly on what we laughably call the 'left'.
The ideal of conservatism is currently under assault. Slowly and surely, idiocy, extremism and backward thinking claimed as "conservatism" is destroying the meaning of this word. How many of you reading this right now think of Glenn Beck and Dick Cheney when I speak of conservatives, when you must know, intellectually, that their ideas and policies are the furthest thing from truly conservative ideas? The label 'neoconservative' is useful for distinguishing these extremists from true conservatives, but it still needless and pointlessly damages the idea of conservatism.
Progressive: A person advocating or implementing social change or new ideas.
Well, I've discussed liberalism and conservatism. Many would call these the two sides of any political discussion. Left and right. Yin and Yang. The problem is that, when people speak of these two sides, there is an unspoken assumption which is this: both sides desire to advance.
I said earlier that liberals choosing to call themselves progressives was telling, and here's why: 'Progressive' doesn't really have a political meaning, or perhaps it can mean anything you want it to. 'Progressive' implies being in favor of 'progress'. Well, who is going to claim otherwise? No one in the political arena is going to stand up and say “I'm against progress!”. Both liberals and conservatives can be (and often are) progressive. The primary source of disagreement is over the rate at which progress is made. Conservative progressives say, “Change is dangerous. Go forward slowly and cautiously, be mindful of our ways!”. Liberal progressives say, “Change is progress! Onward! Leave the old ways behind and leap headlong into the future!”. But both extremes are traditionally about moving forward.
So what is the other side of this particular coin? If liberals and conservatives can both be progressive, what do we call those in Washington, DC that are holding our country hostage with their misguided desire to blow up our economy? Who are they that seek to return to the bad old days of robber barons, unfettered capitalism and working-class slavery? What name can we give to people who seek to undo progress? We need a word to describe this mindset, a word that can be used to discredit this backward thinking merely by its mention, a term that, unlike the corrupted definition of liberal, has the virtue of being accurate as well as pejorative.
Regressive: A person advocating or implementing a return to older, previously unsuccessful ideas.
In strict accuracy, the best descriptive term for such people might be retrogressive. This falls down, though, because it lacks impact. It is a clinical mouthful of syllables that fails the soundbite test. 'Regressive' has the advantage of already being in the public awareness. We hear of regressive taxation as something to be avoided. No one wants to be accused of “regressing”. The word already possesses a distinctly negative connotation and balances neatly as an antonym for "progress". What is more, defining "regressive policies" as opposed to "progressive policies" allows for some rather amusing wordplay.
The tea party folk in Congress would bristle at being called liberals. But they are certainly not conservative! They scream for change, for the upset of precedent, for a mindless charge into a world wholly apart from the one in which we live. They are eager to discard the current values of this nation. Tea partiers are liberal, extremely liberal, but they are not progressive. They are regressive liberals. Boehner and his ilk, the so-called “sane” wing of the Republican party are regressive conservatives. They, too, want a return to the Gilded Age, but they are content to move slowly and leisurely backwards. Advocating a return to the gold standard is regressive policy. Advocating voter id requirement is regressive policy. Only a die-hard regressive would look at our current economic situation and say "we need to go back to the days of when the rich controlled everything!"
Compromise: A middle state between conflicting opinions or actions reached by mutual concession or modification.
Compromise between progressive liberals and progressive conservatives results in progress at some middling rate. This is how the US got from the 13 colonies to the Moon. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, sometimes we argued against ourselves that we should stay exactly where we were, but compromise (and, in one case, civil war) ensured that we kept progressing, however slowly. I feel, however, that we're facing a fundamentally different situation today.
Are there any progressive conservatives left in the GOP? I'd argue that there are many, but they're vastly under-represented in Washington. The Maine Republicans come to mind. There are many, many progressive conservatives in the Democratic party, of course, and even a few (well, one or two) progressive liberals in Congress. But if the Republican party is overwhelmingly regressive, and the Democratic party is largely progressive, what can be said of compromise between the two? What, exactly, is the middle ground between forward and backward?
The answer, I believe, explains a great deal about the current state of our government, our economy, and our nation. Furthermore, I believe it illustrates the ultimate futility of our President's slavish devotion to compromise between the regressive ideas of Washington Republicans and the progressive (if conservative) Democrats.
Enemy: A person who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.
If words must gain new meaning with time, then let us be the ones to seize the dictionary! Using the word “regressive” to describe those opposed to progress could be the first step toward driving public realization of the true goals of the current Republican party. It can be used to shed light on the true dichotomy that is paralyzing Washington; not liberal vs. conservative, but progressive vs. regressive. The GOP in Washington does not represent conservative interests, and the fact that its members call themselves conservative is tarnishing the word and the concept it represents. Irresponsible people trying to force a return to the worst policies of our history as quickly and painfully as possible are not conservative. How dare they call themselves as such? How dare they? The word 'liberal' may be lost to us for a long time as a result of regressive idiocy. I refuse to let them destroy the word 'conservative' as well! Progressive conservatism is an important part of any nation's political spectrum; I'd welcome a return of the GOP to progressive conservatism. Conservatives are not the enemies of progress: regressives are the enemies of progress.
This is, of course, merely the rambling nonsense of a random idiot.